BEGIN again
KYLIE KWONG
BILLY KWONG WAS AT THE HEIGHT OF ITS POPULARITY WHEN KYLIE KWONG DECIDED TO CLOSE THE RESTAURANT. AUSTRALIAN DINERS WERE BEREFT BUT FOR KWONG, IT CAME AS A RELIEF. HERE, SHE REFLECTS ON HOW SHE CAME TO THE DECISION – AND HOW IT LED TO HER NEW VENTURE, LUCKY KWONG, WHICH DEFIES THE RULES OF A TRADITIONAL RESTAURANT MODEL.
About a year and a half before I closed Billy Kwong, I started feeling disgruntled and restless. I’d had the restaurant since 2000 and for those 17 years, I’d always been a person who loved going to work. It was my own place; it was everything I loved doing. I was obsessed with it.
To start feeling disgruntled and restless with my business was a big deal for me – I know myself very well. I thought, “Oh, this is interesting.” I noticed myself having less energy when I thought about work and I started to feel like everything was a challenge.
My attitude started changing. The most telling piece, for about three months, I felt this inner restlessness and it was waking me up in the night. There was literally a lot of tossing and turning. I said to [my wife] Nell one night over dinner, “I think there’s a major shift happening inside.” And she said, “I know… why don’t you go and speak to Subhana about it.”
Subhana Barzaghi is my wonderful Buddhist teacher and has been a mentor to me for more than 20
